Summer reading

Madrid Book Fair 2015

 

Open air fair at the Retiro park in Madrid, from 29th May to 14th June

Go for the books, go for the lively atmosphere too.

World book day

 
If eventually vegetal books are going to become luxury/prestige items, we might as well start enjoying them now.

Wish list : Art Nouveau

 The book Art Nouveau by Gabrielle Fahr-Becker

Summer or winter reading list

More wishlists: Indigo

by Catherine Legrand

Well, either that one or this one by Jenny Balfour.Paul:

Photos from coolhunting

I'm reading

... and absolutely loving every single sentence  word, every single full stop and comma of

* About Cicero's inconclusiveness at the end of one of his long dialogues:

The inconclusiveness is not intellectual modesty - Cicero was not a modest man - but a strategy of civilized openness among friends. The exchange itself, not its final conclusions, carries much of the meaning. The discussion itself is what most matters, the fact that we can reason together easily, with a blend of wit and seriousness, never descending into gossip or slander and always allowing room for alternative views. " The one who engages in conversation, "Cicero wrote" should not debar others from participating in it, as if he were entering upon a private monopoly; but, as in other things, so in a general conversation he should think it not unfair for each to have his turn".

*A quote from Petrarch :

Gold, siver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed states, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

* On the after-effects of On the Nature of Things on thought

The atomists had found joy and wonder in the way things are: Lucretius saw the universe as a constant, intensely erotic hymn to Venus

Go for the classics...sometimes

"If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy," he said aloud. "But since I am not crazy, I do not care [...]"

....

"Ay," he said aloud. There is no translation for this word an perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.

....

"But man is not made for defeat," he said."A man can be destroyed but not defeated."


....



*Important note by the blogger: "Ay" amounts for as much as 75% of the lyrics of flamenco singing. So now you know.

Wish list

this book:

In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States

This volume features the work of 48 Mexican and U.S.-based women artists - Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo are represented, along with lesser known or newly discovered practitioners, including Maya Deren, Helen Lundeberg, María Izquierdo, Jacqueline Lamba, and Janet Sobel. Their contributions to the surrealist movement span more than four decades and their work was both influential and radical in its own right. 

Ayyyyy, an unmissable exhibition that I missed, it's a small world, but no so small.

at Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

January 29, 2012–May 6, 2012 

Summer (or winter) reading list, a suggestion

such funny funny funny bitterness

Wish list

...reading " The influence of warm croissants on human goodness" by Ruwen Ogien

Love books

These two images above were once ads for Buenos Aires Book Fair

Photos from  Summer will come again , English muse and Daintylovers  

In praise of shadows

 "Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty"

I finished reading  Junichiro Tanisaki's book "In praise of shadows" some time ago. It got me thinking that I really agree when he says that it takes a lot of hiding and dark areas in the background for beauty to grasp our conscience.
Would there be any beauty in this blog if it did not hide so many things from everyday life? Don't we have to forget about injustice to enjoy any form of art?
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You can read it online at this pdf  link from NY's School of Visual Arts

Wishlist

I was browsing this book at the bookshop and it is gorgeous inside, it is like a blog full of posts of "interesting ladies" only in printing and very very informative about the work of relevant women writers of all times

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Wishlist

With overviews of the lives of  Geneviève,  patron saint of Paris,  Héloïse, Christine de Pizan, Marquise de Sévigné, Madame de Maintenon, Madame du Châtelet, Madame Roland, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Rachel, George Sand, Sarah Bernhardt, Camille Claudel, Marie Curie, Colette, Coco Chanel, and Simone de Beauvoir.

What the publishing house says:

This book evokes Paris from the MIddle Ages through the twentieth century by tracing sixteen exceptional women whose lives intersected with Paris in remarkable ways and whose eventual fame depended on the city itself. Their stories bring to life medieval culture, Enlightenment ideas, the court of Louis XIV, the chaos of the Revolution, the nineteenth-century art scene, and twentieth-century breakthroughs in science and fashion.

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